Emotional products are rooted in people, not technology.
Specially set up a [Reading] section for reading, screening some books worth reading, and providing some summaries. I hope that you have a book on your hand to let the movement of reading continue.
Today’s headline founder Zhang Yiming once made a micro headline saying: Imagination is the sky, empathy is the foundation. This will make a useful and brilliant product.
Ethicalism is what people often say about “commonness.” In fact, not only Zhang Yiming, the Internet has a lot of product backgrounds, Ma Huateng, Lei Jun, Zhang Xiaolong have all put forward in many speeches, empathy thinking (empathy) is crucial to whether the product is loved by users. However, when we look around, we will find a large number of products that are not empathetic. On the surface, these big crickets emphasize the importance of empathy thinking, but in fact, they want to emphasize that the quality of products is actually the empathy of users.
How can we combine empathy and imagination to create a good product that appeals to users?
01 Determine design strategy
Design influences platforms and product lines, helps target consumers and technology needs, builds brand identity and design language, and creates inspiring strategies that transcend roles or tasks. The design strategy is all about the details, so a comprehensive and concrete strategy is crucial.
The design strategy reflects what value your products and services will bring to people and the broad steps you take to achieve them. Often, these broad steps involve technology, and the focus of the design strategy is to bridge the gaps in technology or to reduce the critical point at which people interact with technology. Design strategy is a form of storytelling. These stories tell how technology has disappeared and how people experience an optimistic future.
As with any other strategy, the design strategy should also be determined in the form of artifacts. In other words, if you don’t write it down, no one will remember it, believe it, or follow it. Since the strategy is about the future, it is useful to include methods and goals – to demonstrate a methodological roadmap that can be used to achieve strategic results and the expected strategic goals.
Slides are the medium of choice for most strategic documents. But the strategic document is so important that you can’t condescend to this traditionally boring medium. In order to maximize efficiency, make a huge road map of value activities. When you print large enough, they really live.
The design strategy can be split into three parts—an emotional value proposition, a concept map, and a product roadmap, and then combined into one tool. Remember that design strategy is more than just a tool or document, it has a powerful role to remind you of your goals. A good strategy can be integrated into the company’s genes and become the second attribute of the strategy performer – why do we do what we are doing? TheirWhat is the connection? Why do I have to manage the small things like the user interface in my complicated work? The reason: it can continue to constitute a stronger, more purposeful intention. The design strategy gives you a reason to work hard.
Jon Kolko, Chairman of the American Society for Interactive Design (IxDA) and partner of the American Institute of Modern Design, in the book Good Products Fighting for Sympathy, from understanding user behavior to achieving Empathy, provided us with a few executable suggestions.
02 Establishing an emotional value proposition
The first part of the design strategy is the emotional value proposition. Value proposition is a commitment to create value for users. The promise is fully communicated to the user; it is explicit in the value line (through marketing) and implicit in the design decisions that define and shape the product (through product use).
To understand your value proposition, ask and answer this value question: What can you do after you acquire or use your product before he can get or use the product?
Value is often described in the economic sense as the form of wealth created, such as money, or another scarce resource—time. Therefore, it is tempting to answer the question of value from a practical point of view and describe how your product can help people do things.
Of course, the value of pragmatism is only part of the story. Users buy or use a particular product, not only because of its use, but also because of the feeling it gives him. To understand the emotional connection between products and people, think about feelings, wishes, desires and dreams. Ask this modified question: After you get or use your product, what does it feel like before you get or use your product?
03 Create product personality
The second part of the design strategy is product personality. Product personality is the attitude your product takes. Product personality is manufactured and designed. A particular product personality surface features features, functions, languages, images, and other formal design features. Product personality is similar but different from market adaptation, availability and usability. It can evolve from an understanding of the user, an understanding of the market, or an attitude and approach from the designer.
Product personality is about emotion. But emotions are difficult to visualize and quantify, and it is difficult to find emotional dialogues in analytical environments such as businesses. Even if these conversations happen, people will find it difficult to develop and understand, because the content of the dialogue is highly subjective and the results of the discussion are vague. Instead of thinking directly about emotions, it is better to develop products as a person.
If your product is alive, what kind of person would it be? What kind of attitude does it have in an anxious situation? How will it deal with threats? What will your product look like at the conference: is it innovative or analytical? Will you guide the meeting or sit behind the graffiti? Try to imagine the productPersonality, to give life to the product.
Once you are used to the idea that your product may have personality, you can begin to describe what this position should be. First, identify the emotional characteristics of your desire to present your product to the world. It is good to determine four or five extremely specific personalities. The more specific, the more effective it is.
For example, compare the ideal emotional characteristics of Lexus and Mini Cooper. Lexus is a luxury brand, but “luxury” only gives us a vague feeling. Lexus wants to be luxurious, sexy, awkward, cold, elegant, elegant, romantic, and unreachable. In contrast, the Mini Cooper is a childlike curiosity, free and easy, and it wants to be full of energy, relaxation, fun and freedom. We know this because we can analyze the car itself, the car’s advertising and buying experience. Existing brand languages provide clues about product personality.
As with functional requirements, these emotional requirements describe aspects of the product or service you are building, and like functional requirements, you can test whether these requirements have been met after the product is complete. These emotional needs are presented in the form of factual statements – “Our products will…” and you can introduce these requirements into the same context, point or defect tracking system you have used. However, the difference between emotional and functional needs is that emotional needs are ubiquitous. They exist in every use case, in every aspect of the product, and determine, describe, and artificially include all other product, quality, availability, operational, and design decisions that follow. In short, they are better than everything.
04 Continuous interaction with users
In addition to emotional value propositions and product personality, the third part of the design strategy is an understanding of similar emotional experiences.
First, think about the insights and goals identified through research. If you work in the medical field, you may have already described such things as “people want to do their best to stay healthy” or “people don’t understand or distrust medical terms.” Goals such as “safe treatment of the disease” or “understanding the treatment plan” may have been identified. Writer Alan Cooper observes that “when technology changes, tasks usually change, but the goals remain the same”, so these high-level goals have nothing to do with the solution.
Based on your insights, describe the typical and unique interpersonal interactions and emotions when people try to achieve their goals. Some of the interactions and emotions that support the goal of “safety treatment of disease” include:
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Remember to take your medicine on time every day.
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Be confident in making progress.
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Occasionally consult a medical professional.
Support “Some of the interactions and emotions of the “Day Therapeutic Plan” goal include:
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Read an easy-to-understand treatment plan.
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Discuss complex issues with others.
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Be sure to keep abreast of the situation.
A lot of situations are similar – from gardening, registering for advanced MBA courses to marathon training. All of these situations require daily interaction, a lengthy process and slow progress, requiring less frequent but regular professional interactions, a number of terms that can be described in plain language, and a sense of control over the whole.
Take the marathon training as an example. Now start describing this whole process. Draw its timeline and describe the main tools people use to train. For example, people wear smart bracelets to track their physical condition during the day; training schedules remind people of training programs; people add running groups to get encouragement and help. People read inspirational stories of success as people who love running.
All of these tools help you develop new products and provide a platform for the potential features of your new product. Think about the ideas of schedules, groups, magazines, and devices, and think about why they are so effective in similar situations. Then, draw on these ideas and give them new uses in new scenarios. This method of observing similar situations mobilizes the analogy of your brain across patterns. According to the cognitive scientist Hou Shida, the analogy is the core of all human thinking and is the “connective organization” that helps us understand the world around us.
In order to take advantage of the rich analogy, you need to have a broad worldview. With it, you think of marathon training or gardening. So, in addition to the technology that motivates power, think about how to broaden your cultural and social horizons more broadly. This may require you to read articles that have nothing to do with software, start-ups, or products, and to participate in meetings that are twice or even three times farther away from the comfort zone.
Designing an ideal product is not just a good idea. It is an in-depth observation of existing behavior and transforming this behavior into a more desirable behavior.
Emotional products are rooted in people, not technology. This process is to talk to people and understand them. It combines psychology and anthropology to reveal potential needs, needs, and aspirations. Learn to extract meaningful insights from massive behavioral data in order to build empathy with users and create products that better meet user needs.
This article is organized from “Good Product Fighting is Sympathy” CITIC Publishing Group 2011.7
Author introduction
(United States) Jon Kolko
President of the American Society for Interaction Design (IxDA), a partner at the American Institute of Modern Design, and founder of the Austin Design Center, is a professor of industrial design at the Savannah College of Art and Design, known as the “cradle of global artists.” He has also served as chief designer and creative director of frog design company, one of the world’s leading sources of innovation, product director of several large multinational companies, professor of product design and development at the University of Texas, Monterey University, Mexico and Malmö University, Sweden. .